


Standing in the Way of Control

by Unda



Series: It's the end of the world as we know it [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Derse and Prospit, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 02:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11152446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unda/pseuds/Unda
Summary: Takes place during chapter 15 of M.C. Escher that's my favourite MC. Dirk dreams in Derse, Cal plots, Bro appears and this might be the beginnings of the robot uprising.





	Standing in the Way of Control

He settles under his covers and sets his shades on his bedside. For the first time since he learnt to talk Dave is refusing to talk to him. He can’t let him have a sword again, not when the risk is losing him. Fuck, why does everything have to be such high stakes? He was stuck letting Dave be around Bro because the alternatives were worse, stuck being unable to get help because it’d mean losing him. Now that Bro is gone the goalposts have moved again and he has to keep Dave’s weapons from him or else lose him.

He hopes that Dave can’t do this forever, but only time will tell.

He shuts his eyes and rolls onto his side. Sleep does not come to him and when he opens his eyes again he realises that he opened the wrong set again. He’s on Derse once more. He sits up with a sigh and spares a thought that this could perhaps be psychosis of some kind, and maybe he should research that. For now though he’s just going to pretend like he’s dreaming, it’s just easier.

He leans against the arched window and looks out at the eternal night of Derse and its violet buildings and spires. He confidently and calmly jumps from the window and sails through the air to Dave’s tower. Dave is asleep, he seems a little restless, rolling over from one side to the other as Dirk enters the room.

Crossing the distance to Dave’s bedside happens without him even thinking about it.

“I’m sorry.” you say softly as you look down at Dave’s sleeping form.

“I know that you don’t understand why I’m doing this but I’m doing this for your own good, I’m not the bad guy. I can see where things are headed, and that’s not what I want, it’s not what you need.” you tell him, though Dave doesn’t react because he’s asleep.

“You’ll understand when you’re older, I hope so anyway. But I don’t have a choice here.” You tell him.

Movement catches your attention out of the corner of your eye, and you turn to see the mirror on Dave’s wardrobe, but it’s not you reflected in it. It’s Bro. You whirl around but no one else is there, and when you turn back to the mirror it’s just you again. Warily you walk towards it, as you come right up close you spot that there’s a small chip missing in the middle of it at chest height. Things in Derse often reflect the state of things in the real world, Dave and Rose’s rooms are always identically messy here as they are in the real world. In the mirror behind you is Dave’s medication on his bedside table because it’s there in the real world too. So is Dave’s mirror chipped in real life?

You reach out and touch the chip but no sooner than you do does the mirror start to crack. A long thin crack forms, spreading upwards and downwards from your finger, bisecting your reflection down the middle. You glance at Dave’s reflection as he whines and flips over in bed and a large chunk of the mirror shatters into spiderwebs.

Behind you comes a quiet laugh and you turn, sword drawn to see Cal slithering bonelessly out from under Dave’s bed. He stands unnaturally and looks at you with glassy eyes and his fixed grin. Your feet are frozen to the ground, you’ve seen him move before but really only out of the corner of your eye or incredibly fast. Things you could attribute to your imagination or Bro, or remained just unexplained. Never this slow, open and obviously him. You can’t advance towards him or stop staring either, your throat goes dry and some part of you feels feral. He’s right by Dave, YOUR Dave and a huge chunk of you is screaming to destroy him. To rend him into parts for being near your Dave, your kid, he belongs to YOU. Another part of you is terrified of Cal, you can’t deny that this thing is some kind of monster now, it’s no childish fear anymore. You are suspended between fleeing and fighting and you feel ripped apart at your core.

The sound of shattering mirror behind you snaps you out of it, and you blink. Cal laughs, and as you open your eyes again he is already flying out of the window. He runs and you chase, you don’t even think about it. You fly out into the darkness, hot on Cal’s heels as he flaps bonelessly through the air between buildings. When he soars up into the sky you change your course and fly up away from Derse and further and further out, you’ve never gone so far from your tower.

As you chase Cal through space, and it doesn’t occur to your to wonder how you can breathe out here, you leave Derse behind you. The purple ball that’s always been there is but a speck in the distance, and you have a sudden moment of almost vertigo. You’ve no idea which way is up or if there even is an up, you don’t know if you can find Derse again from here and if you can’t then you’ll never be able to check on Dave’s sleeping form or Rose and Roxy’s. The cold hand of fear wraps around your lungs, making it hard to breathe but you just keep your eyes trained on Cal. Fear is no stranger to you, and you can’t let it stop you from protecting Dave once and for all.

Cal is momentarily obscured by an orb of brilliant gold, orbiting a blue and white planet, but as your position shifts you can still see the puppet, and it’s headed for the gold moon. Functionally it looks just like Derse does, it’s like a lazy video game palette swap. Cal curves down into the moon’s atmosphere and draws close to the buildings you nearly catch him but you have to dodge a steeple of a building and he’s out of your grasp again.

You blur past the ground and as you do you see that the people here aren’t insect black but rather porcelain white. This place too has towers just like your own, but you have no time to look inside, Cal is heading to one and you are going to catch him there.

As you fly past one tower you think you hear someone call your name, a girl maybe but Cal is SO close that you can’t break focus to see. He wants you to, you know he does, one glance back and at this speed if you hit a building you’d be a fine paste. No, you can’t allow distractions.

A gold tower arches up from the ground and Cal flies in through the arched window. You land there a second later, your purple outfit out of place in all of this gold. Or it would be if the inside of this room wasn’t as purple as everything on Derse.

You can see right away that this is a troll room, the boy in the bed is a troll. Perhaps Dave and Rose’s age but it’s hard to tell. He has smears of white face paint on his face so for all you know he’s much younger. The room itself is cluttered enough to make the twins look tidy, there are what you think might be bike parts in one corner, bicycle horns on the other and a not inconsiderable amount of peeling Insane Clown Posse posters hanging from the wall.

Notably, there is no Cal that you can see anywhere.

You step cautiously into the room and check that the kid in the bed is indeed asleep, which he is. Worryingly above his bed the word HONK is written on his wall in glowing purple over and over again. Creepy. You don’t like clowns. Still, the kid is as asleep as everyone else on Derse is, so you ignore him. You carefully poke through the horns with your sword and crouch to look under the bed, no Cal.

You hear a rattle behind you and whirl around, heart in your throat, but there’s nothing there. Or at least it takes you a moment to see what is there. You had assumed the boxy white thing was a chest of drawers or something, but on closer inspection you see a plug coming out of it and into a wall. You touch your hand to the side and feel cool metal, running your finger along the edge reveals a cold rubber seam at the top.

“Dirk?” Comes a call again from outside but you ignore it. Cal comes first.

It’s a freezer.

Cal must be inside. You ready your sword and wrench the lid of the thing only to be stopped by a padlock around the side. You slice it off with no problem and carefully open the lid. It occurs to you, but only briefly, that if the thing was padlocked then how could Cal be inside? That thought and all other thoughts are driven from your mind as you see what’s actually inside the freezer.

You see shattered sunglasses resting on the blood splattered face of your brother. His skin is white as snow and frost covers his ruined body, most of that had not survived the fall from your apartment so well as his face. Something flutters down past your eyes, a string or something.

One of Cal’s puppet strings.

You drop the lid of the freezer in alarm, and the string snaps tight in a circle around your throat leaving you gasping. Your sword clatters to the ground as you claw at your throat trying to pry the string from around you as it pulls tighter and tighter, you can’t breathe or call out.

“Dirk?” the voice calls again, but it’s closer now, outside. You glance over, desperate for help to see Jade float past the window totally awake, followed by a troll girl. You know her, she’s Rose’s soulmate, you met her at the party.

Plush fabric pushes up against your ear as you try to gasp out your desperate plea for help from them, but you can’t get the air moving enough. You hear Cal’s laugh in your ear and then bright pain rips through your skin and you topple to the floor with a thud.

There’s an urban legend that if you cut a man’s head off, it’s still conscious for up to a minute after. You can personally attest to the truth of this, unfortunately your thoughts are mostly filled with pain, and mental panicked screaming about being decapitated.

“Dirk! Oh my god!” Jade’s voice filters through as things start going black around the edges of your vision.

The world spins, and you see the concerned faces of two young girls before everything goes black.

You jerk awake in your bed gasping for air and clawing at your neck. You stumble blindly in the dark for the bathroom and slap the light on, you run cold water over your face with shaking hands. You look up at your mirror to see that your hair is a mess and you look like a crime watch poster of yourself. At least your mirror isn’t cracking though. That had to be a dream, right?

God but your neck still hurts. You tilt your head back, and your eyes widen at the perfectly straight red line that runs the whole way around your neck. You can see the scratch marks on your throat from your own fingers in your sleep but how did you make that straight line? It can’t be real.

You shut your eyes and turn off the tap, your hands tighten around the cold porcelain. If it’s a dream, then it probably means something. You don’t have to be a psychologist to know that you fear turning into Bro, seeing him in the mirror and then finding his body aren’t exactly subtle hints and getting killed in punishment for your crime is obvious guilt. So it’s just a dream. You’re going to ignore the mark on your neck, it’s just a coincidence or a psychosomatic whatever, like stigmata.

So you had a nightmare because you’re stressed and you’re stressed about Dave, he even accused you of being like Bro. Well, he’s not entirely wrong, is he? You’re controlling him so that he can be what you want. Bro wanted Dave to be some kind of emotionless warrior, and you want him to be a normal kid. Sure your thing is more healthy, and you don’t cut him open with swords to meet your ends, but you’re still manipulative.

If the doctor finds out that Dave still has a sword she’ll send social services your way, and you can’t count on getting Signless like last time and who knows how he’d take that or if he’d be swayed in your favour by his son probably, no definitely, being the soulmate of yours.

You walk to your bed, at the foot of it is a locked fireproof chest which you open up easily. It’s got all kinds of things in here that you don’t want other people to find or are too valuable to lose. A backup of Hal, Dave’s guardianship forms, printed photos of you and Dave, your backup weapons, a few of Bro’s things that you couldn’t bear to part with and photos of your parents. On top of all of that are Dave’s shitty swords. He has three total, two that he hid in his room and his main one that he kept on him at all times. You pick up his main sword and hold it in your hands.

Bro bought this for him, it’s not his first as it’s too big and heavy for that, but he’s had it since he was nine maybe. Bro paid for this and put it in Dave’s tiny hands and forced him to fight for his life. Dave used to rotate between this and his other swords because somehow the kid had a knack for breaking them which you honestly have no idea how he managed it because you never did that. This sword survived the longest though.

Since Bro died Dave has shown zero interest in using the thing, he doesn’t ask to practice much less ask to actually strife with you. You’ve only seen it in his hands when he’s drawn it out of fear, and even then you can probably only count the number of times you’ve seen that on the one hand.

So why is he so adamant about holding onto it when he knows the risks? He doesn’t want to use it, and he’s got no one to fight. Why can’t he just do what you say and give it up? You know it’s the best thing for him.

But maybe that’s it, maybe it’s you telling him what to do. Bro forced him to use and sword, and you force him to stop, he gets no choice. And a lifetime of training has taught him that being unarmed is bad and you’re forcing him to stay like that. Dave was right to point out that you’re not giving your weapon up.

You draw the sword, the metal sound of it being unsheathed ringing loud in the dark.

You don’t want to be Bro, but you don’t just want to define yourself by your not-Bro-ness. Dave has to have a sword, he has to not have a sword. Feelings are bad, no, feelings are good so go to therapy. You should be killed for being gay, actually no it’s fine and hey Dave might not be straight! You must be giving the poor kid whiplash.

Bro was insanely controlling, and you’re controlling too. Bro was even going on about you not understanding what he was doing and you not being allowed to mess up his plans anymore on the day that you killed him. Bro controls Dave one way, you control him another, it might be better, but it’s not good.

You’ve still put off researching into your disorder, and maybe this is a thing to talk to your doctor about, but you think you have the solution to this problem at least. If you want to not be like Bro, then give up control.

You gather Dave’s swords up, put your shades on and walk to his room. It’s not light yet, but you don’t want to stay in your room, the lingering of that dream or whatever it was makes your neck hurt.

[autonomousTerminal began pestering timaeusTestified]

AT: What are you doing?  
TT: I’m going to give him his swords back.  
AT: What? No, you can’t.  
AT: I know he’s mad at you right now, but he really can’t stay that way forever.  
TT: I’m not willing to gamble on that. Besides, this is controlling him like Bro did, isn’t this the exact thing that you’re meant to stop me from doing?  
AT: No it isn’t, moron.  
AT: Bro controlled Dave by terrorising him and shaping him through fear and violence. You’re restricting him for his own safety. It might both be forms of control, but that’s like demanding that someone drink steam because it’s still water. It’s not the same form of control.  
TT: But it is still control. It’s controlling him.<  
AT: Okay, fine it’s control. But so is making sure Dave goes to the doctor and dentist and eats well even when he doesn’t want to do those things. You can’t just have it be anarchy.  
AT: But here you go, parenting 101. Don’t give children weapons, genius.  


You sit down on the floor and look at Dave, he’s all tangled up in his covers like he’s been thrashing around with nightmares. You look at the sun starting to rise and sigh.

TT: He’s already had weapons though. You know what being caught unarmed was like, you have my memories.  
TT: You don’t think that taking them away and making him feel like that is counter productive?  
AT: Maybe at first but when nothing bad happens he’ll get over it.  
TT: He might and if he does he may not like me anymore when he reaches that point.  
TT: And who can blame him if I knowingly make him suffer to get there?  
AT: So you care more about Dave liking you than doing the right thing?

To be fair to Hal, you do give that a moment’s consideration. You’ve been trying to do right by Dave his whole life, and before that you looked out for Roxy as best as you could, something that’s started up again now that you live with her and her mother. Goodness knows that you’ve had to console Roxy more than a good number of times about some thoughtless or heartless thing that Roxanne has said to her.

TT: Why do I always have to do the right thing?  
AT: Because it’s the right thing.  
AT: You have to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. It’s so obvious that I can’t even explain it without getting tautological up in here.  
TT: But I don’t want Dave to hate me, I don’t want him to feel scared, he wants his swords back, and I hope he wants to still be my brother. If I give him his swords back everyone is happy, he’ll probably talk to you again too.  
AT: Don’t you try to bribe me!  
AT: And you know this is the wrong thing to do, you know the risks here. The doctor finds out about the swords, you lose Dave.  
TT: He can just lie. And I won’t let him take the sword to school or to therapy, that’s a compromise.  
AT: And if he fails to lie which he does because Dave talks to himself without realising it and rambles and reveals every thought in his head.  
AT: I’ve even heard him mutter ‘stupid pretty Karkat’ to himself once. I’ve seen glass less transparent than him.  
TT: I’m ignoring the fact that Dave doing that is actually pretty funny and moving to the point that Dave has to learn how to lie at some point, this will give him motive. Besides, he never let anything about Bro slip to teachers at school, he is capable of deception when he knows the stakes.<  
AT: But you know this isn’t the right choice to make. Even if you rationalise it, you know that the safer option is the one we agreed upon, total confiscation of weapons.  
AT: If you give them back this isn’t you accidentally fucking up as you have in the past, this is you purposefully choosing to do the wrong thing.  
TT: Yeah, okay, maybe it is. Maybe I’m going to go with what I feel is right rather than what I think is right.  
AT: You’re going to, what, listen to your heart? Are you going to paint with all the colours of the wind next, you goddamn Disney princess?  
TT: Conversation over.

[timaeusTestified ceased pestering autonomousTerminal]

You lean your head against the wall and shut your eyes for a moment. These days talking with Hal can be… a trip. The older you get the further your personalities diverge. It may not even be possible for him to see things as you do. He was made from your mind, but you also programmed him with the prime directive of protecting Dave. You don’t know what that feels like from a first person account, whether it’s the devotion that you feel or more of an ever-present unshakable thought. You hope that it doesn’t actually hurt him. When you made him it hardly seemed relevant how he might feel about it.

You open your eyes to see that you’re being pestered, but not by him but by Jake’s little sister.

[gardenGnostic began pestering timaeusTestified]

GG: hello dirk  
GG: are you awake?  
TT: Jade, hi. I don’t usually hear from you, what’s up?  
GG: i have a question for you, but it might be kind of silly!  
TT: Go for it, I’m just killing time until Dave wakes up.  
GG: hows your neck?  
[autonomousTerminal interrupted]  
AT: Hey guess what.  
TT: What the hell Hal?  
AT: If you’re not going to do what needs to be done to protect Dave, if you’re going to act like a child and not do the right thing… then I’m going to treat you like one.  
AT: Too bad I’m the only one who knows what your passwords to everything are now.  
AT: Talk to me when you feel like being an adult.

The pesterchum login screen floats before your eyes and, unsurprisingly your password does not let you in. You try your email to the same effect, your college email still lets you in because apparently, Hal doesn’t want you to fail your classes. Every other account online that you can think to try has you locked out of it, even your goddamn anime streaming services.

You thump your head on the wall and sigh. Hal has always had the option to do that and he knows that you know that, but until now it’s been a gentleman’s agreement that he won’t lock you out. Well, fine, Hal gets bored too, and eventually things will turn out fine or he’ll want something else bad enough that you can leverage your access back. You’ll just get Roxy to explain your absence to people.

But Jade though… you saw her in your dream after Cal decapitated you. It’s a real coincidence for her to suddenly ask about how your neck feels now. You wish you could talk to her about it, but Hal has ruled that option out.

You sit and wait for Dave to wake up, going back and forth a few times about whether you’re going to give Dave his swords back at all. You waver on whether to go the whole tough love route but all it’s got you so far is coldness from Dave and clear distress and nightmares from him. This isn’t what either of you wants.

His alarm eventually goes off, and it takes a shockingly long amount of time for Dave to stir into wakefulness and slap it to turn it off. His arm goes limp over the side of his bed and he groans unhappily, he’s never been a morning person. Not that you are either, you’re just not really a sleep person to begin with so being awake is just something that you’re doing more frequently anyway.

Dave sits up and jolts with fear when he sees you, but it vanishes almost immediately, in fairness to him you are a fairly Bro-looking guy lurking in his bedroom when he was asleep with three swords in your arms. You don’t blame him for his kneejerk fear. It’s far more hurtful when he sees that it’s you and he scowls angrily at you, none of his expression hidden by his shades as they’re set on his bedside table right now. You stand up, swords still in your arms.

You walk up to Dave and hand them back, and the kid looks up at you in genuine confusion.

“You’re giving them back?” Dave asks in shock.

“Just… please don’t take them to school or therapy and don’t tell your doctor. You know what she can do. I don’t want to lose you.” You say, it’s a request, not even a demand.

Dave doesn’t say anything, he just stares at you, and so you take your cue to leave. You’re halfway down the hallway when his skinny body collides with your back, arms wrapping around your middle.

“I’m sorry.” He says, right into your spine. You practically feel the words reverberate up your backbone and around the inside of your skull.

“I didn’t mean it… about you and Bro. I was just- fuck, I was freaking out about not having them. And you shouldn’t have to always be the one fighting people off for me, I’m not a baby anymore.” He says.

You lower your hands from where they’d flown out to catch your balance and instead rest them on Dave’s bare arms. You can’t see his scars through his soulmark but you can still feel them on his skin and the bright white of them on his other arm is proof enough of Bro’s savagery.

“There’s no one to fight, though.” you say quietly.

“Better safe than dead.” Dave says with a shrug that you feel.

You turn around in his arms and Dave lets you go a little to do so. You catch his face is your hands and look at him.

“Just not school or the doctor, please?” you ask, and Dave nods.

You pull him close and try to fight the unease in you. Hal isn’t wrong, you know the risks to this. Fighting the possibility of losing Dave is all you’ve done for the larger part of your life, so leaving so much of that in his hands now is… terrifying. Control issues? You? Never.

You let him go with a sigh and step back.

“I’m sorry I took your swords, I’m- the threat of losing you does things to my head, you know?” you say lamely and Dave nods.

“Yeah, but you’ve never turned on me for it before.” Dave points out with a frown, he’s evidently still annoyed at you even if it’s fading.

“Well, you’ve never been the thing making that threat happen before.” you explain, and Dave shrugs noncommittally, if he has thoughts on that then he’s not sharing them with you.

“Okay, well, I need to get dressed for classes. And I’m not sure if you’ll be able to reach me on pesterchum or anything else, not unless you go through Hal first. I don’t know how he’s set it up.” you warn him and Dave raises a sceptical eyebrow at you.

“Why? What happened?” Dave asks you.

“Hal changed my passwords to everything, I’m locked out of pesterchum.” you say bitterly. Dave stares at you for a moment before a slow, sly smile spreads across his face, it’s one you’re far more used to seeing on a scheming Rose rather than Dave, but sometimes it appears.

“He doesn’t approve of you giving me my swords back.” Dave guesses and you nod.

“And so he’s punishing you by taking your things away because he doesn’t trust your judgement and figures that if he does it long enough you’ll do what he wants. Wow, I can’t imagine how shitty that feels.” Dave says flatly and you grimace.

“Man, actual irony sucks. But, yes, that’s pretty accurate.” you say with a nod, and Dave laughs quietly.

“Well, have fun with that. I’m going to go stash my swords in my room, seeing as I’m going to school unarmed.” Dave says and walks off shaking his head. You’re glad that he finds it funny.

You head back to your own room and figure that the closest thing to pesterchum to converse with Hal would just be a text input file in Hal’s base programming. It takes you a little while to remember the way to get to that application, but you get there.

>Dirk: So I know that asking you for my access back would make you not give it to me but I also know that you know that and so not doing it would also make you think that I’m deliberately holding out on you, leaving me with a lose-lose situation.

>Dirk: With that said I don’t suppose that Dave’s response has done anything to sway your mind?

>Hal: Absolutely not.

>Hal: You may think that you’re in the clear but this still has every possibility to go wrong and I’m going to keep fucking with your shit until you give in and do what you have to. Oh, it does look like I can talk to Jake as you, that’d be a shame if I did that, wouldn’t it?

>Dirk: All I need to do is give you a body, a hat and a sword and you could pass for Bro.

>Dirk: I’ve already told Dave but I’m going to tell Roxy and Rose too, everyone will know that you’re not the real me.

>Dirk: And don’t forget, you need me too. I’m the only one who knows enough about how you work to fix you when bugs come up. If this is a waiting game then I’m the only one with an actual life to distract me.

>Hal: Et tu, Brute?

>Hal: Holding my very life and mind ransom now? Were you of the opinion that you were holding the moral high ground here?

>Dirk: You just threatened to impersonate me to my soulmate.

>Hal: Consider this, what if he is my soulmate too? You had his mark when I was made, if I am a copy of your mind, then I am a copy of your soul too. What makes Jake more yours than mine?

>Hal: Frankly I am far more self-aware and balanced than you, I’m not the one putting Dave in danger here.

>Dirk: He’ll know it’s not me when the others tell him. And you know he doesn’t like talking to you anyway.

>Hal: You really have a way of making me feel like the inferior and replaceable version of someone better.

>Hal: So how about this… did you know that I’ve embedded myself in Jake’s computer? I can see all of his messages that he gets.

>Dirk: I don’t want to know, and you shouldn’t be creeping on Jake. I’m not even having any more of this conversation.

>Hal: You know that you’re not the only person who thinks that Jake is their soulmate, besides me I mean.

>Dirk: Yeah, I know Jane thinks that she might be too. I learnt this years ago. This isn’t new information.

>Hal: Here’s some new information then. Jake isn’t sure which one of you it is, he thinks it might be her.

>Dirk: What.

>Hal: And let’s face it, Jane is an all around better person than you are and statistically is the gender he likely prefers.

>Hal: And you know how Jake hates to disappoint people. He’s likely just been keeping you at arm's length in the hope that you’ll get the hint.

>Dirk: Shut up. You’re just fucking with me, it won’t work.

>Hal: You’re really bad at lying to yourself, I would know, I was you once.

>Hal: But you’re right, you have no objective proof. Not unless you talk to Jake. Which you absolutely can do, I will happily give you your login back if you take Dave’s swords back.

You rip your shades off and fling them onto your bed. Hal has to be lying he has to be. Jake wouldn’t allow you to think of him as your soulmate if he didn’t believe that he was. But… but he has been so adamant about not letting you call yourself that, and he never talks about Jane’s advances which you had just taken as tact on his part but maybe he just feels bad for you. It could be pity. Goodness knows you were never worth Jake anyway, you don’t have any worth at all. You’re a bundle of neuroses strung together with scars and a kid that you drop anything for, it’s hardly an attractive list of qualities in a partner.

You consider Dave’s swords, you could grab them and find out the truth of this from Jake, you know he’d be awake. But… no, you promised Dave. Jake may or may not be your soulmate and losing him would break your heart for sure but Dave is your brother. That much is certain and immutable, losing Dave wouldn’t just break your heart, it’d break your everything. Hal is playing you.

You turn and march out of your bedroom and walk straight into Roxy’s room. She is thankfully just pulling her shirt down and is no longer in any state of undress.

“Hal’s taken over everything.” You tell her and she stares at you in confusion for a moment.

“Like… your online accounts or the whole internet? Are you two having a digital slap fight or is this a Skynet sitch?” Roxy asks as she picks up her hairbrush and drags it through her hair.

“I’ll get back to you on the Skynet thing, but no he’s taken over my accounts. He also claims that he’s hacked Jake’s computer and has been reading his messages and apparently Jake thinks that Jane might be his soulmate and he’s offering to unlock my accounts if I confiscate Dave’s swords again.” You blurt out.

“You gave them back?” Roxy asks in surprise.

“Yeah, I know I said I wouldn’t, but we compromised. Hal disagrees and that’s why he’s doing all of this.” You grumble and Roxy makes a disapproving noise.

“I’ll let everyone know that you’re offline for a while then.” Roxy says carefully.

“Please.” You say.

“And that anyone who looks like you online is not you, Hal.” Roxy says pointedly because of course Hal’s listening.

“And there’s another thing but I’ll get back to you on that. As for Jake… he’s confused, and Jane is very… very firm on thinking that it’s him. I can understand how much that hurts you because I’m not a fan either. But I guess it sucks for you to have a people pleaser as your soulmate, Jake wants everyone to be happy. You know that.” Roxy reminds you and you nod automatically.

“It’ll be fine.” Roxy assures you and kisses your cheek. You remember that there was a weird time when you first met her again that she had a crush on you, before you became a family and the primal parts of your brain realised again that you were related and shut that down for her. You prefer it like this, you do love Roxy dearly but she’s more of a sister, even if she is technically your niece. But damn your family tree is screwed up.

“I’d better let you get ready.” You sigh and Roxy grins at you.

“You do that, your hair’s a mess Mr Strider!” She giggles and tangles her hairbrush in your hair.

“I’m keeping this now.” You tell her and walk out of the room with it still stuck there and her laughter ringing out after you.

Hal is just playing you. You can’t control what Jake thinks, you just have to trust that you’re right even if it is a leap of faith. You can’t control how Dave feels but you can compromise with him. You just have to… let go. You can do this.


End file.
